When I worked with radiologists (at a PACS vendor, mainly selling to the military and the federal prisons), the radiologists and staff were exercising due care about minimizing radiation exposure from CTs. Personally, I don't care about regular x-rays, particularly digital ones, for any reasonable medical use. I get one every year or two as part of a checkup. CT and C-arm fluoroscopy scare me, as an educated person w…
Apparently loads of dentists lost fingers and hands to cancer and bone degeneration before they figured out not to hold the x-ray film themselves. Now they have the patient hold it. It just drives home that the stuff is not harmless.
So your finger would get 4000 “dental” x-ay of ~5uSv (u=micro), that is 20mSv. For comparison, the radiation worker yearly dose limit is 50mSv, but the 50mSv are distributed to all the body, and you get the 20mSv in your finger. Doesn’t sound good.
The problem is the repetition. Taking 4000 dental x-rays in a year is not a good idea. (I’m not sure if someone proved that it’s dangerous, but don’t try this just in case.) This is also the reason why x-rays technicians hide behind a shield while taking the x-ray.
* Nobody claims that x-rays are not dangerous. The claim is that the risk is minimal under reasonable use and in some circumstance (for example an accident) the benefits are much bigger than the risks.
* And the Linear No-Threshold model is mostly an upper bound, the risk of small radiation dose is perhaps smaller than what is extrapolated from big radiation doses.
For example, suppose that 4000000 patients take one dental x-ray and 1000 dentist take 4000 dental x-rays each one. In which group will be bigger the increase of the cancer total number? The Linear No-Threshold model says that the expected number should be equal. But perhaps it’s smaller in the patients group, because the body perhaps can deal better with a low number of problems from radiation.
